Suggested Books for Perl Programmers
If you are new to Perl, you will make the task of learning Perl easier by selecting an appropriate introductory book, with tutorial lessons. Once you've learned the language enough to start writing your own programs, you may also benefit from having a more detailed book as a reference. The book Programming Perl provides a nice balance of beginner/tutorial and some introduction to advanced topics (e.g., complex data structures), with extensive reference sections (functions, pre-defined variables, library modules, etc.). The tutorial sections are a little fast-paced for people with little experience in programming in other computer languages.
Before purchasing a text, visit the website and browse through the Table of Contents to see if it suits your needs and reflects your skill level.
Besides books, there are on-line reference materials.
If you are taking the Introduction to Perl shortcourse, much of the material is inspired by some of the books listed below (particularly Programming Perl and Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics).
Note that the O'Reilly website offers free downloads of the example programs listed in each given book, so you can copy them to your own account and try them out.
Additional book lists: perl-programming.org and O'Reilly Publishing.
Beginner Books
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Programming Perl | [ sample programs ]
[ wikibook ] |
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Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics | [ sample programs ] |
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Learning Perl | [ sample programs ] |
















